With an economic crisis looming, marketers must find new means to cut costs and deliver returns. Many interactive marketing tools can actually provide cost-effective ways for firms to increase sales and deepen customer relationships.

I hope you will join me for a complimentary Webinar where we discuss how interactive marketing can help you battle budget cuts or slagging sales due to the slowing economy. In this Webinar, I'm planning to define how interactive marketing should be a mandate for all marketers to stay relevant to their end consumers. I'm also going to tackle why interactive marketing matters, how your firm should approach it and how Forrester can help you craft meaningful interactive marketing strategies.

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Reebok and its agency Carat shared the details of their "Run Easy" campaign -- a multichannel effort to create a movement in running.

The situation: Reebok has strong brand recognition, but a much smaller share of sales than competitors. Reebok wanted to create a perception that running was for everyone, not just for the elite, a very different message than competitive positioning. Reebok also believed that to do this well, they needed to create a *movement* around running. It wouldn't work to try to motivate people around running just with a few outbound campaigns.

The approach: Creating a movement is different than creating a campaign. In fact, Reebok used an approach somewhat contrary to how traditional media efforts are developed. They seeded their market with the "run easy" idea in advance of a large media blitz. Then they used media to further interest in the idea and enroll people in the movement. And last they spread the message through in-person events and viral elements in order to drive participation and encourage the community to spread the word on Reebok's behalf.

From my perspective the primary lessons to take away from Reebok's effort, are: